Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1918. HENRY FORD AND THE RAILWAY PROBLEM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1828, 18 May 1918, Page 2

Manawatu Herald SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1918. HENRY FORD AND THE RAILWAY PROBLEM.

ACCORDING, io the Now York correspondent of The Times, n statement made hy Mr Henry Ford occupies the foreground oi' the discussion oi the railway problem in America. He makes the following criticism of the railway service:—“The freight car weighs as much as the load it generally carries. It travels two-thirds full, and- conies back empty. Passenger trains weigh 50 to 150 times as much as the passengers in them. A Pullman car weighing 50 to 40 tons averages loss than a ton of passenger load. Fourtilths of the work of a railway today is hauling the dead-weight of its own wastef'ully heavy engines and coaches. This is why railway presidents have such a hard time to figure out the freight and passenger rates high enough on 20 per cent, of the live load to cover the cost of hauling this enormous 80 per cent of dead-weight around. Nature has distributed alloy materials which, with heat treatment, make steel of 75 to 100 Lons tensile strength instead of 25 tons. And then the weight can be cut down proportionately. Alloy steels of high tensile strength cut down the weight of truck and automobile. This criticism (says (he Electrical Review)] applies also to electrical vehicles of all kinds, and calls attention to a matter of great importance.